Online Narcissist Abuse: Cyber Abuse Victim Shares Her Story

There has been a recent surge of awareness circulating on the world wide web related to Narcissist’s and how they operate. Such resources include websites launched by authors who have been diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and blog about their condition to online and in-person Narcissist healing recovery groups. Unfortunately, some of these networks could be run by or are infiltrated by persons who “catfish” victims they know are vulnerable (which can simply be just having your personal information known in an online setting).

We received an inside re-telling of the Narcissist abuse from an online victim who aids in the appropriate steps to take to end the mental abuse based on her own personal experience:

Dear Super Empath,

It is hard to know where to start this letter, but thank you for being a resource that offers assistance when you find your hands at the target of Narcissistic online abuse. As all sense of trust seems to be shattered when you are a victim of narcissist cyber abuse, I think for other victims who find their way to this site should start with reading my experience and hearing my story.

No, it’s not you, the victim, who is responsible for the abuse. Is your heart is pounding? Been there, and let me tell you: you’re being abused. For me anyways, it feels better to know you are not alone in what you have suffered so let me start with my story to help you regain some trust in humanity.

In my case, I had read an e-book by an author who details the inside workings of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) from his own experience. Unlike many other victims, I was not recovering from a Narcissistic romantic relationship, but struggling with how to deal with someone who was a part of my everyday life whose behaviors and attitudes matched many of the NPD traits. At the end of the book, it presented an online blog of which users can join to interact with the Narcissist directly. For me, without understanding the advice giver, I can’t relate with the words on an emotional level. I remember feeling overjoyed that I could perhaps ask questions to see how I could work on either co-existing in peace with my relationship or helping change some of the negative behaviors.

Without thinking twice, I became a follower of the blog and began interacting with comments and questions and remember feeling elated that there was a Narcissist who was willing to openly talk about his condition in a way I could understand so I could gain insights to help me with my own situation.

What I did not realize until approximately forty-eight hours later is that in those first few seconds of clicks, the entire network had my name, my pictures (as my profiles were public), access to my blogs, my social media profile, and could figure out just about anything they wanted to know about me. Now, remember, this blog wasn’t private and many people ‘catfish’, meaning they target these sites, abuse victims, and then try to blame the Narcissist as the culprit!

Within 48 hours of registration on this particular blog, my social media profiles were targeted by fake profiles and an email was directly sent from a fake profile trying to ascertain if my email was in use.

Now, granted, I am not trying to be conceited, but I am a very pretty girl. If I was just looking at a picture of me, I would have pegged me as someone who may have been attracted to the Somatic Narcissist type. However, I am both smart and pretty and was not there to garner attention for myself, but to learn more about the NPD condition on behalf of another. I get how I could have been pegged and then abused for not further reciprocating in a way that not many people understand.

For me, I will never forget the crippling fear I felt when I correlated that the words of which the Narcissist writes were actually taken into action even in an online setting such as a blog.

The fact that without regard for any privacy conditions, my email and personal information was public to a foreign group was so foreign to me that I began to panic. The fact that I may have potentially put my family in danger was overwhelming (as it is all to easy to find everything about a person online now a days). If you are currently are being, or have currently been, the victim of online Narcissistic abuse, you will understand what I am talking about.

It is hard to explain if you haven’t been targeted, but the Narcissist’s web of deception is aimed at making you feel you have no control by planting “subconscious seeds” of doubt that are not directly aimed at you, but really are about you.

These actions were repeatedly performed on me by those who had access to sensitive and public information (remember, a Narcissist will hack you if they can without feeling bad about it at all).

However, a self-defining moment for me was a choice: I could sit there and be scared for the rest of my life or face my fears and dive into understanding the mentality of what I was dealing with. I took the burden of responsibility on my shoulders that I should have been more careful and needed to know more about the severity of my situation, especially if I had put my family in serious danger (they followed me even on private forums!).

I took off countless days of work to devote myself to understanding just what interacting with a Narcissist network entailed. I didn’t want to live in paranoia or fear for the rest of my life, but had never had a blog take my email from a comment and try to weasel into my life and had no idea who had done as such.

When I joined this particular blog, I went into it believing that people are innocent until proven guilty. It is how I choose to see the world. I was hoping that my fears would be unfounded and pushed them to the side AND GAVE THE NARCISSISTS THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT! It was a choice and took a lot of courage, but I refused to treat any person I interacted on the Narcissist network with disrespect or suspicion. Behind the mask of a gravatar image, there is a real person – Narcissist or not.

While I was freaked out that my social media profiles had certainly been targeted, I hoped for the best. It took me much longer to figure out that other commenters could have been insiders or imposters who appeared as regular commenters that had exploited my information.

This fact manifested after a while as it became clear to me that the majority of the commenters were not without inside knowledge of the Narcissist Network. It’s like people are speaking in a secret linguistic code. I didn’t notice it at first at all, because my interaction for a while was just to read posts, ask a question or two and then resume my normal daily activities. When my questions and comments were not published, I began to follow certain patterns geared towards speaking with other commenters (it is how I felt I was being steered).

Well, I was here to learn more about the Narcissist, not realizing that the commenters were more of insiders. Remember, I had a twofold mission: 1) evaluate the severity of the threat on my social media (was it going to go farther); and 2) learn about the NPD condition.

It took me a while to understand the language between persons (it’s like a secret code) that I now dub as ‘Narcian’. Trust me, Narcian can be brutal!

In this particular network the mind games started by a tactic commonly referred to as Crowd Psychology which relates to the changing of behaviors and thought processes of the real user verses the crowd as a collective where commenters talk about things that were related to my life, but not in an easily provable way.

In this way, crowd behavior is heavily influenced by the loss of responsibility of the individual and the impression of universality of behavior against the victim, both of which increase with the size of the crowd singling out the scapegoat.

In this way, to “fit in” to the crowd, the Narcissist controls the Network to slowly start changing your view points and wearing you down to become more like a Narcissist yourself in an odd train of events. This is typically referred to as cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by that person. When confronted with facts that contradict personal beliefs, ideals, and values, people will find a way to resolve the contradiction in order to reduce their discomfort. If cognitive dissonance is being used as a tactic against you by others to confuse you, then it can be a real nightmare.

Take the following example (this never exactly happened, but wanted to provide an example of what I mean):

So in the following above illustration, the Narcissist Online User screen name “Prince of Darkness” informs ‘Innocent Online User’ screen name “Angel Innocence” that other women are jealous. Angel Innocence is trying to make sense of what is happening to her and is scared. She contacts at 5:49 pm.

Less than eleven minutes later, Narcissist Network Commenter Insider screen name “Aphrodite Kisses” comments to the same User (Prince of Darkness) a ‘linguistic comment directed specifically at the victim saying it is stupid for the victim to be on the blog of which the Narcissist Network commenter agrees.

If you are targeted online for abuse, you may very will very well get indirect weird explanations as shown above. Nothing is every directly told to you, and can make you want to go crazy! This is what I dub as understanding ‘Narcian’.

Other comments can appear as follows:

The first thing you need to know is that there is no reason to learn Narcian. However, this comment is from the actual person delving out the abuse! Here is what you need to know:

The post is from an insider.

If the post resembles something that is going on in the Narcissist situation that you are involved in, it’s 99% about you. This is how they communicate literally. The little things like “friends for over 10 years” are specifically designed to throw you off, but just ignore all that to get the scope of the message.

The emotion in the words regardless of who is writing them is anger and manipulation. While cognitive dissonance may confuse reality of truth, it doesn’t change the emotion behind it that is trying to be hounded from your sanity.

There is no harm of establishing your own truth from the words, but just know it will be yours and it will not be real.

They talk in code and use you to communicate the message.

Naturally, upon exposure, the Narcissist’s will want to convince you that you are the problem and the Narcissist i.e. it’s all in your head (not true). The Narcissistic attitude is that the Narcissist has to be superior at all times – therefore, if you are not conforming to the desired results of you, they will push harder in the negative by ultimately trying to define who you are by labeling you as being either a Narcissist or a co-dependent.

More specifically, if you read too deep into the comments, you are a Narcissist for being so self-centered. If you think it does not relate to you, you are a naive codependent. All fun and games when your computer and online activity is being constantly monitored. Talk about a nightmare!

Their goal is to wear you down so you mentally “break”. In my case, I had to pretty much guard all my social networks and shutdown from interaction with anyone new, but it was entirely frustrating that my life had become one of guarded walls.

I truthfully wanted to believe that my paranoia’s were not substantiated, but the fact was I was a target for sever cyber abuse.

Everything became a massive time suck the more I remained, but I wanted to get to a point where I felt like I wouldn’t have to be watching over my shoulder everyday. I refused to let their distorted reality cloud mine, and took it as an opportunity to understand the Narcissist fabricated reality.

I write this letter today so others who find themselves in a situation such as mine can learn from my experience. A pleasant surprise was that not all the people I met there were bad and some seemed to understand a bit of my plight.

However, denial did not help either. I didn’t want to accept the fact that my social media profiles were targeted, and did my best to make it clear I was not going to take kindly to future threats.

However, hopefully this post will help others who find themselves in a similar situation to know where to come for help.

Trust me – you’re a victim of abuse if anything written makes any sense.